This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
Lots of stuff you won’t find anywhere else today. Thankfully, you’re one of our 8,621 subscribers.
Let’s get to it.
In the email today:
🏉 Scoop: Major League Rugby and YHS Expand Partnership With Coaching Development Focus
The U.S. will host two Rugby World Cups next decade — the men’s in 2031, the women’s in 2033.
Many believe those events could mark the sport’s breakthrough in America — and national leaders are working to lay the foundation now.
A major point of emphasis is coaching. Rugby is a contact sport — which makes quality instruction even more important — but there is also limited expertise available, especially at the youth levels.
Major League Rugby and USA Youth & High School Rugby will tackle that challenge as part of their expanded partnership, Buying Sandlot has learned.
MLR will sponsor free access to the comprehensive 6 Degrees digital coaching and educational platform to all YHS coaches.
“We found coaches and parents didn’t have the experience or expertise, but wanted to get a certification in coaching because they wanted to help and get involved,” YHS Executive Director Giovanni Vaglietti told Buying Sandlot.
“We saw that as a big gap in the market and wanted to fill it with a structured curriculum. For someone who is brand new to the sport, this takes away the cloudiness and hesitation.”
6 Degrees was created by Fiji national team coach Mick Byrne, who played a significant past role with international power New Zealand’s U17 team
The platform provides continuing education, development tools, training modules and skills training and drills for all levels
The platform is available for 15s and sevens competition
The platform also provides specific resources for physical education teachers who want to introduce the sport in classes through the Imagine Rugby initiative, a collaboration between USA Rugby, MLR and YHS
"We believe that quality coaching is fundamental to the future of rugby. By partnering with YHS to provide this essential resource, we are investing in the infrastructure that supports the sport from the ground up." — MLR CEO Nic Benson
There is also a 6 Degrees platform for athletes; YHS’ high-performance pool — 100 male athletes, 100 female athletes — has been using it for several months.
“When the World Cups leave, what is the legacy?” Vaglietti said. “That is the bigger piece for all of us. The World Cups are that launch pad.”
This is a hot take, but one I believe wholeheartedly.
Rugby has the potential to be colossal in America, especially at the youth level.
The sport is a perfect marriage of football and soccer.
A 15s match takes two-ish hours. Sevens is even faster.
Everyone — even the big kids — touches the ball and has the ability to score.
It is a full-contact sport, but safety is a major emphasis and there are far fewer high-impact collisions than football.
Rugby already boasts a crossover celebrity athlete — Olympic sevens bronze medalist and Dancing with the Stars runner-up Ilona Maher, who will compete in 15s at the World Cup in England later this month.
And — in theory — the U.S. is capable of becoming a world power.
But the ceiling will be limited without strong coaching. Especially with contact involved. We have seen so many data points showing parents are focused on getting their kids the best coaching possible, regardless of sport. And kids need to be encouraged and engaged when trying a new sport they lack familiarity with.
Rugby definitely faces some hurdles. I wonder if flag football has already boxed it out on some fronts, for starters. But coaching is a hurdle that can trip everything up, so it makes sense to attack it.
🏟️ The Shopify of Youth Sports Tournaments*
There are only a handful of companies that deserve the moniker: The Shopify of [X].
That’s because it’s rare when one platform can cover all of a business’ needs in a single interface.
EventConnect is the Shopify of sports tournaments.
It’s the leading no-cost platform built specifically for organizers who juggle schedules and hotel blocks in the same breath.
registration
rostering
payments
real-time performance reports
lodging and more
Their proprietary HousingConnect tech bolts room blocking and booking straight onto checkout, delivering the best online group rates while parents still have their credit cards out.
This means up to:
30% more room night reservations
24% savings on team hotel costs
EventConnect already powers 9,000 events, taps 30,000 hotels across 800 destinations, and backs it all with class-leading customer support.
Want to join them?
*Sponsor
🎥 Rematch Closes In On 10K Users
The sports video service tells us they are gaining traction in the US market:
On pace to hit 10K users by the end of August
10.5M social media views over Q1/Q2
Over 22K highlights and 2K games filmed in Q1/Q2
Over 6K highlights captured in July
Close to 3M views in July
The company started in France and launched in the U.S. earlier this year.
The’s service’s AI allows users to “rewind” the previous 15 seconds of game footage viewed through its app — ensuring parents can capture big moments and plays without constantly recording.
"The proof of concept in France gave us the confidence to launch in the U.S., but you can never predict the future — there’s always a mix of anxious and excited energy," Rematch U.S. CEO Hanna Howard told Buying Sandlot.
"In our first six months from January through June, it’s been incredibly rewarding to step back from the daily grind and see our KPIs consistently surpass what our French counterparts achieved in their first year. It’s clear the U.S. sports market is ready for Rematch, and with new sports and features just around the corner, the momentum is only building."
Howard said the July surge was fueled in large part by basketball users.
👨💻 TeamLinkt Closes Series A Funding Round
The Saskatoon-based sports administration tech firm scored over $6M from Growth Street Partners for product development acceleration and customer support expansion.
The raise brings all-time investment to about $7M.
TeamLinkt’s management platform is free for clients, differentiating it from competitors like LeagueApps and TeamSnap.
The business model relies on credit card transaction processing fees and in-app advertising while providing communications, scheduling, rosters and other functions to clubs, teams and organizations at no cost.
It has a heavy focus on AI features:
Scheduling— “Enter your teams, locations, and conditions in the AI-powered sports schedule maker and get your conflict-free schedule instantly.”
Rostering
Creating events like practices
Generating updates
Reporting
The tech is used by over 3M users and over 3K organizations globally. There are over 500K monthly app uses on average.
The AI-ization of management platforms is here.
Some thoughts:
1) AI is often as good as the data available to it and how well-structured it is (I think this is the future of SEO btw— outputting superior, well-structured data). In this case, TeamLinkt controls and structures the data, so presumably the AI can easily generate quality, consistent outputs. It’s basically mandatory that update emails, for example, are accurate.
2) I see two branches of the AI platform game right now: AI for management, and AI for parents. A startup I’m advising will soon launch the latter (we’ll tell you about it here) which will aggregate calendars, rosters and stats from existing platforms and enable better communication between parents. The existing major platforms use AI in some spots - LeagueApps has an AI-powered club schedule importer, GameChanger uses AI for its recaps - but none are leaning as heavily into AI as TeamLinkt for the overall operation.
3) Transaction-fee model sounds like the “Square payments for youth sports admins”.
4) Can we please move away from the TwoWord FirstLetter UpperCase NamingThing ForSports ManagementPlatforms?
🧱 Movement (And More Trash Talk) In The Indiana Fieldhouse Fracas
Courtesy of Activate New Haven
Back in March — before I (James) even got here — Kyle wrote about competing fieldhouse projects in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and New Haven, which is about 20 minute away.
(And both are also competing with the folks two hours away in Kalamazoo!)
A Fort Wayne official was diplomatic about a potential rivalry (their fieldhouse will be city-owned).
The developer behind the New Haven project was not, predicting a “gloves off” battle.
New Haven has now beaten Fort Wayne to shovels in the ground. And its principal is still talking too.
New Haven’s $31M, 140K-square-foot fieldhouse — built by Card and Associates, which has a host of youth sports facilities in the region — will anchor a planned multi-use district.
5 basketball courts
10 volleyball courts
65K square feet of multi-use indoor turf
Future plans for hotels, housing, dining and more
Card and Associates CEO Andy Card told reporters he doesn’t think Fort Wayne will ever actually build its $50-$60M fieldhouse.
“They’re 2-3 years behind,” he said.
📈 Trend Watch: H.S. Girls Sports Streaming
Some staggeringly impressive stats from Hudl, via The Gist:
The platform has seen 8,083% growth in women’s sports livestreams over the last 8 years
51% of Hudl livestreams captured women’s sports in that span (about 520K games a year)
26% of Hudl’s streams were women’s volleyball; high school football accounted for 10%
Yet another indicator of how much growth we are seeing in girls sports — and what a rocket ship volleyball is.
Also: Hudl said it is used by 99% of high schools in the U.S.
That is noteworthy when discussing the extremely fragmented youth sports streaming market. There are so many players involved that adoption seems the more likely route to consolidation than acquisition. If Hudl is everywhere at the high school level, it figures to be position to trickle down.
📋 Job Alert: Youth Sports and Fitness Coordinator, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam
Yes, you would work for the U.S. Navy.
And yes, you would be working in Honolulu.
This position is a Child and Youth Programs (CYP) Coordinator of the Youth Sports and Fitness (YSF). The YSF programs enable Navy families to balance the competing demands of family life and military readiness by providing rewarding opportunities for youth to be physically active and exposed to positive lifestyle behaviors. This position will plan, organize and provide a year round supervised youth sports and fitness program including the social, recreational and educational program components.
The job’s listed pay range is about $59K to $76K. You would also receive an 8.64% cost of living allowance. The full job listing can be found here.
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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Good game.